Levain Bakery Chocolate Chip Cookies

These cookies are a copycat of the famous Levain Bakery Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies. The tiny bakery in New York City almost always has a line of New Yorkers and tourists waiting to buy their monstrous cookies. I think my version tastes very similar to the real thing, allowing you to recreate the famed New York City cookies in your own home.

After several dozen batches of cookies and having to make a grocery run to restock on butter, walnuts and chocolate chips, I finally have a cookie recipe to share that tastes like the ones I ate at Levain Bakery.

As you may recall, I went to Levain Bakery last fall for the first time. I stood in that long line, doubting that the wait could possibly be worth it, only to completely fall in love with their thick, gooey, melty cookies.

Each cookie weighs in at a whopping 6 ounces. In the last week, I made about 10 pounds of cookies. I don’t want to calculate how many pounds of cookies I ate while recipe testing. The cookies have crispy edges and a soft, slightly underbaked interior. When you break open the cookie, it falls open, revealing a gooey center with melted chocolate mixed in.

While Levain Bakery is most famous for their chocolate chip walnut cookie, my favorite is actually the Dark Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookie, which I recreated with this recipe.

It took me a little longer to recreate their signature chocolate chip walnut cookie, but after many tweaks and watching a video of the owners making the cookies, I think these taste and look pretty darn close to the original. You can watch the video here. Now I no longer have to plan a trip back to NYC just for these cookies.

You can also check out my copycat recipe for the Levain Bakery Dark Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies here.

Yield: 8

Levain Bakery Chocolate Chip Cookies

This is a copycat recipe of the famous Levain Bakery chocolate chip walnut cookies. Each cookie weighs 6 oz!

Directions:

Preheat oven to 410°F. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, add butter and sugars. Cream until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Since you are dealing with cold butter, start on low speed for about 30 seconds. Switch to medium speed for another 30 seconds and then high speed for 1 minute.

Scrape down sides and bottom of bowl. Add in eggs. Mix on medium speed until incorporated.

Add in cake flour, all purpose flour, cornstarch, baking soda, and salt. Mix on the lowest speed ("stir" function on my Kitchen Aid) until all the flour is just incorporated. Careful not to overmix.

Add in walnuts and mix on the lowest speed for about 5 revolutions until walnuts are evenly incorporated into the dough.

Add in chocolate chips and mix on the lowest speed for about 5 revolutions until chocolate chips are evenly incorporated into the dough.

Remove dough from bowl and mix with hands a few times to make sure chocolate chips and walnuts are evenly distributed. Dough should be quite sticky.

You can either divide dough into 8 equal pieces, or I prefer weigh out the dough. Each dough ball should weigh 6 ounces. You should grab the dough by the handful until you reach 6 ounces and lightly form a very loose ball. Make sure to keep it loose as the cookies should be airy and not compacted (like the owners demonstrate in their video).

Place only four cookies on each baking sheet, spacing them about 2 inches apart, so that they don't spread onto each other. (Please see my photo above for how I spaced them.)

Bake only one sheet at a time in the middle row of the oven, for about 12-13 minutes. The tops of the cookies should be a light brown and the dough should look cooked, but the cookies should not be fully set. Let cookies cool at least 15 minutes. This gives them a chance to set so that you can remove the cookies without them breaking and will also allow inside of the dough to cook a little more. Make sure you don't move the cookies before they are set. They should still be gooey inside even after you wait 15 minutes. Cookies are best eaten warm.